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Cross Edge (Etna vs Lilith: ZOMG LOLI FIGHT)

X Edge: X Edge (Pronounced and sometimes listed as "Cross Edge"), is a Tactical RPG by Compile Heart released in 2008 for the Playstation 3 featuring Darkstalkers, Ar Tonelico, Disgaea, Spectral Souls, the Atelier Series and Mana Khemia. Yep, this is the only game here that features more than two companies and doesn't contain a single Street Fighter.

I give the game a cautious thumbs up. It is CRAZY COMPLEX and much
more occluded then it needs to be but still fun. Honestly, the biggest
problem is the user interface is HORRIBLY bad. There are controls that
do things (like telling you what items do) that the game never tells
you about. There's tutorial plaques to read at the start of the game
but there's never a hint that you can even read them.

I will begin my diatribe by describing what you get after every fight.
Normal games, you get some gold. Mebbe experience, some items. This
game? You get Experience Points, Gold, Enemy Points, Technical Points
and Party Points. BUSY

Experience points do what you think they do, level you up. Whenever
you level up, you get 2 points to spend towards your stats: Strength,
Vitality, Agility, Intelligence and Luck. However those two points
don't convert 1 to 1, it's more like 2 or 3 or 4 or 900 to one
depending on where your stat is currently. The lower the stat, the
cheaper the cost. So you would think, at upper levels, it's gonna get
hella expensive and it will but that's where Party Points come in.
Party Points are basically stat bonus points that anyone can spend.
You get a good 8 or so per fight so they add up. The problem is I get
turrible Analysis Paralysis trying to decide who to spend it on and
where. I always just end up bolstering everyone's weak stats which is
really just a huge mistake to do.

Then we have Enemy Points. Enemy Points are used to upgrade your
weapons and accessories. You get one weapon equipped and one
accessory; weapons make the ouchies and accessories can be fitted with
Active Skills, something I haven't found yet. There's a third
equipment slot as well but the game hasn't told me what that's for.
Anyway, every thing can be upgraded 5 times. Once it's fully upgraded,
it can be converted to another item, usually NOT a better weapon or
piece of armor. What, then, is the purpose of converting? Why, for
synthesis of course! You have a metric fuckton of recipies for making
new items, weapons, skills and armor and most conversion items are
important for those things. You can also Composite items which is
tempering them with materials you get from monsters if you beat them
correctly (yeah, I'll get to that later) which increases the various
stats of the items.

Then we have Technical Points. Once you figure out how the hell to
play the game, you get Technical Points for efficiently and flashily
beating monsters. You spend TP on goodies: uber weapons and armor,
special skills and recipies and a bunch of basic shit too but only an
idiot would spend precious TP on stuff you can just go buy anyway. I
get about 1 or 2 a fight; the uber stuff costs as high as 25000
points. I suck.

Gold is gold but you REALLY need it. You pretty much need it for
everything you do and it's scary expensive to raise someone from the
dead. So don't die.

You also have Titles and Costumes. Titles are like Xbox Achievements,
survive 35 battles, get 3000 Gold stuff like that. The only difference
is you get items for getting them and there's a LOT of them. Costumes
are unlocked as you save souls; they change stats and appearance of
the females and don't do jack shit for the males. Which is probably
the dumbest thing about the game.

Most of the time in the game is spent exploring the overworld. There's
two kinds, the standard overworld is a BIG place which far too small a
resolution that you have to wander around in while trying to find
souls. Souls are invisible so you have to hit the square button every
few inches to do a Search. If you're near a soul, then it shows up and
you get to get a bunch of bonus items or important event or boss
battle. This sounds neat but it effectively makes you have to wander
over every square inch of the map hammering the square button. This
was annoying back in Wild Arms 3, why the hell did they bring it back?
You have a non combat character named May who does the actual soul
search, as she levels up (which she probably does by saving souls, I
don't know, the game won't say) she can find MORE souls which means
every time she levels up you have to go back and search everywhere
you've already been again. The other sort of overworld is the
dungeons. Dungeons are actually a side scrolling platforming game. You
can run and double jump and that's pretty much it. Square button opens
treasure chests but of course the game never tells you that. You still
get randomly attacked as normal. It's neat but comes off as kind of
odd.

Battles. Oy.

Ok, battles occur on a 3x4 grid, one for the party side and one for
the enemy side. Before and during every round you can switch
characters out or move them around the grid (which you will need to do
frequently to make sure they can actually hit something) at the cost
of Action Points. Action Points are what let you do shit. Every
character has from 1 to 4 skills they can do depending on what weapon
they have equipped plus a selection of EX Skills that are basically
super moves you can pull off that require a LOT of AP as well as
Stress Points. You get Stress Points by getting hammered and doing
some hammering.

ANYWAY

Once you start fighting, the game goes into heavy action mode. Let's
say I'm playing Morrigan, she of the humongous boobies up there. I hit
her Libido Touch attack and she does it; then the Action Count starts.
It's about 5 seconds that you have to switch to another character and
use their skill or to use one of Morrigan's again. As long as you
don't let the Action Count run out (which is pretty simple to not have
happen) you get a chain going. This doesn't do much for you until you
find Branch Combos. These are special skills that happen when you
chain together certain moves. So far I have one. They seem kind of
hard to find and don't seem to make much sense, I would imagine
characters from the same games would have Branch Combos; not so so
far. You also have Extra Combos; they're the same things as Branch
Combos but they use Extra Skills only and are ridiculously flashy.

There's also something called Break Arts. Every unit in the game has 4
stat bars, Hit Points, Break Points, Burst Points and Down Points.
Every Skill in the game will usually affect Hit Points as well as
possibly affecting one of the other bars as well. If you get one of
the other bars empty it results in a Guard Break which makes the unit
take a lot more damage and gets you bonus Action Points. I think.
Also, if you deplete the Hit Point bar and then FILL IT UP AGAIN in
the same chain, you get an Overkill which will result in the monster
dropping its rare item, usually something you need for Synthesis.

And that's pretty much the game. There's a hell of a lot to do but it
all comes down to some pretty serious grinding. Combat seems
interesting but at this stage I have so few options that's it's just a
grind. You get rated at the end of every fight, from grade S all the
way down to H, which I did manage to get last night. Combat can get
REALLY hard really fast which I like.

I have eight characters so far. Morrigan (above boob demon woma) is
fun to have around but her defense is terrible and she has to be at
the front to actually reach anything with her attacks. She has a nice
area attack tho and is the only character so far with a Branch Combo.

Miko is the female protagonist. She's annoyingly responsible, pretty
much the sterotype anime female. I'm sure she's a good cook yadda
yadda. I don't like her much but she's the other character with the
Branch Combo. I still don't use her much tho.

York is the male protagonist. I have to admit I like him. He's rude,
is more then a little nuts and is packing a huge red pistol. His
expressions are priceless, the guy is a murderous psycho. I wish he
did more damage tho.

Lyner is from Ar tonelico and gtet sused a lot because he has high
armor and is a a damn good tank. He has a big old sword and gets
shoved in the front all the time. He has a newe Lightning Sowrd skill
which is pretty flashy but doesn;t do much damage.

Misha is also from Ar tonelico. She has a HUGE damage spell but she's
made out of tissue.

Aurica is ALSO from Ar tonelico and she has three skills so far. Her
Sylvan Wind hits everythihng for a ton of damage but at this point
she's also the only character with a healing spell so I have to make
her use that constantly which sucks.

Ayatane is ALSO ALSO from Ar tonelico. He's a crazy son of a bitch and
looks creepy as hell. I haven't used him much because I just got him
but he uses dual wakazashi so he's another front line fighter.

Marie is from Atelier Marie. I have no idea what good she's for; she's
armed with a feather duster and throws nuts. She does about as much
damage as it sounds like she would. The only plus side is she gets off
more attacks then anyone else because they don't take much AP. She is
prety funny tho. If Misha is made out of tissue, Marie is made out of
WET tissue. That's her in the middle.

I'm stuck on a boss battle versus the turrible PRINNY. Hopefully after
that I get him and Etna as characters.

GAME IS FUN

Here's a pretty good video of what the dungeons are like and a crazy
fight at the end. The kind of fight I just cannot pull off at this
point.

I read about this game on quite a few other message boards and most people do not share the same positive viewpoint as the reviewer in this thread. I urge anyone on the fence about this game to dig deeper than his review. Buyer beware.

I'm not very far into it but the vibe I'm getting is the same one I had for the Atelier Iris games. It's a good JRPG with some nice side stuff. Not the greatest game/s in the world, but if you can ignore the mostly minor flaws it's certainly entertaining without being as epic or heavy as a Square RPG.

Kind of like how you can enjoy deep, thought provoking movies AND still have a good time with summer blockbusters.

Yeah, I read that review. He admits there's a steep learning curve and he obviously didn't get over it. I managed to figure out the battle system fine, it's incredibly deep and fun to tinker with, I haven't seen any slowdown and his complaining about money is proof positive he didn't get that far in the game. I doubt he got past the first area. I'm slopping over in cash, I have a ton of Blessing Leaves and one of my characters can raise the dead anyway and you get her about 3 hours into the game.

I'll point out the reader average there is 8.3 as well.

He is right on the story tho, man it's dumb.

But then, I love Idea Factory games. I'm having a huge amount of fun with it still.

I had this game on pre-order a month before its release. Back when it came out in Japan, I had heard it wasn't great from the (admittedly scant) information on the internet. However I still pre-ordered it, because I have to say I enjoyed the Japanese demo. I didn't know what was going on, but I found the battle system really fun. I didn't know what I was doing when I started; I had no guide or any information on the game aside from its premise. I had to figure the battle system out as I went along, playing with the menus and buttons to see what happened. And I thought it was interesting! I couldn't figure out how to win the demo, so I fought a boss battle against Etna and some prinnies, and then spent the next hour just walking around fighting the enemies on the world map. And I was having fun! While grinding, of all things!

It really isn't that complicated, and wasn't difficult to understand, even in Japanese. The only things I couldn't figure out were what activated team-up attacks, and what the "down" meter meant. Everything else I figured out in 10 minutes through experimentation.

In light of this fact, I find that I must be really smart or Ryan Clements, the IGN guy, just- I don't know. I'm not sure how he found it overwhelming. Or maybe I don't realize that I still don't "get" the battle system? I'm not sure what to say about his complaint over the battle system, aside from that I just find him wrong. So if I believe he's wrong about the battle system, then that removes one of his complaints. What's left is that the game has too menus, the story scenes have too many characters, reviving dead characters costs a lot of money, and there's slowdown. Those are all possibly valid complaints (well, the "reviving dead characters" one seems questionable), but those complaints, at least as he described them in his review, don't feel strong enough to support why his took off 6.5 points from the game. I don't mean to say he's wrong about disliking the game, but his reasoning in his review doesn't feel strong enough to support the score he gave Cross Edge. Either he's really picky, or he's not very good at articulating his thoughts, much like I'm not very good at articulating my feelings on his review.

Basically, I don't find the IGN review very good.

So I pre-ordered it, bought it, and haven't played more than 10 minutes (I'm finishing inFamous first). I'm not expecting an epic quest, a deep and engaging story, or an interesting and developed world (thought they would have been nice!). If that's what you want, I really don't think you'll find it here. But as long as it's entertaining on some level, seeing the characters interact in amusing conversation, counting the numbers of times Morrigan acts like/is called a slut (at least once in the first 5 or so minutes!), I think I will enjoy the game.

I also don't think you'll find this game around at game stores later. It seems niche even among the niche crowd. And considering the various opinions on the game, mostly negative, it's probably safer to not buy it out of curiosity and hope you manage to like it. I guess you're best bet is this: convince a friend that the game is really good, get him to buy it, and then try it at his house/borrow it.

I like how the generic werewolves in that video above all look like J. Talbain.

Everything you need to know about D&D's history can basically be summed up in this: Once, D&D had two competing products - Basic, which was written for newcomers and was geared for easy sales and easy games, and AD&D, which was complex and hodgepodge and meant for hobby veterans. Basic is the best selling D&D product that has ever existed. AD&D fans inherited the brand and have never tried to recapture Basic's design philosophy. -Professor Cirno

Essentially, it's the same problem that NxC had... and that most of these mashups tend to have, a very shallow little combat engine. You just find the attacks and combos that work, and do them over and over and over and over again, no matter the enemy or situation. There are lots of characters, but barely any difference between them in how they're used, so tedium tends to set in relatively quickly.

Everything you need to know about D&D's history can basically be summed up in this: Once, D&D had two competing products - Basic, which was written for newcomers and was geared for easy sales and easy games, and AD&D, which was complex and hodgepodge and meant for hobby veterans. Basic is the best selling D&D product that has ever existed. AD&D fans inherited the brand and have never tried to recapture Basic's design philosophy. -Professor Cirno

I got this and put a couple hours into it and thought it was pretty interesting. But I have to beat Lost Odyssey before I can really dig into it, because I am incapable of taking on multiple RPG projects simultaneously.

I'm trying to make sense of this comment, but am completely coming up blank. SRPG games have contributed to general crossovers before, there are oodles and oodles of SRPG crossover games, this isn't an SRPG, and Etna/the Prinny are the only SRPG characters even in it. Pick whichever one of those that is an appropriate retort to whatever you were trying to say.

I bit and bought this. Man, this is absolutely for the RPG fan. The IGN review is written by someone who probably doesn't love RPG's, and most likely was writing for the person who is a casual gaming fan. For a core RPG fan, this game has what you want.